Sunday, April 02, 2006

This article (from The New York Times, no less) puts the "M and M" from mifepristone (Mifeprex, once known as Roussel-UCLAF Lot 486) into perspective. Of 500,000 abortions performed with this drug, six have resulted from the death of the woman--a mortality of greater than 1 per 100,000 cases. The comparable mortality from traditional surgical abortion is 1 per 10,000,000 cases.

In any other treatment context, when a new treatment kills ten times as many patients as does the old one, doctors shun it. And many doctors are at least having second thoughts. Yet prescriptions of this drug continue--because the taking of this drug is a political act, not a true therapeutic (literally, healing) act.